1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of detecting a region of interest in a breast image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Radiologists examine mammographic images to diagnose various abnormalities in a breast. The images are nowadays examined on a display device such as the display screen of a computer workstation.
Essential for a mammographic display system is the ability of the radiologist to quickly analyse the mammographic images of the breast and create a report of his diagnosis.
When examining mammographic images on a computer screen, physicians typically only desire to look at the breast area and not at any of the background.
In order to fill the viewing area of the display device with the breast image, the radiologist uses the zooming and panning functionality of a display device. Normally the user interaction consists of a zoom in operation and a pan operation or consists of a zoom in operation performed after positioning the mouse on the part on which the user want to focus. These operations require manual interaction and are thus time-consuming.
As the radiologist is only interested in the breast area, it is highly desirable to be able to extract this breast area and display it at optimal scale. This would help the radiologist to focus on the diagnostically most relevant part without needing to perform a lot of manual operations such as iterative zooming and panning.
Segmentation of breast images into multiple regions, including a breast region and direct exposure region, for various modalities and vendors turns out to be very difficult. Tuning the segmentation algorithm is inadequate.
US2011/0216949 discloses a computer implemented method for defining a breast window within an image. The method starts for the center region of the breast image and searches from this center region outwards for the breast boundary. Points on the breast boundary are used to define the borders of the breast window. After having defined the breast window, it is optimally scaled, e.g. scaled to the original image scale. In this way finer details of the original image can be examined more accurately. The implementation described in this patent application is rather complex.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,885,443 discloses a method for temporal comparison of breast images. The breast images are displayed on a same mammogram display at an identical tissue distance per unit distance without requiring a scale-adjusting viewer input.